Dustin Hoffman Apologizes After Being Accused of Harassing 17-Year-Old

As an extremely pervasive predator culture continues to be exposed in Hollywood following multiple accusations of sexual harassment being lobbed at movie producer Harvey Weinstein, longtime actor and director Dustin Hoffman, 80, has now joined the list of accused men.

On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a column by Anna Graham Hunter, who claimed Hoffman harrassed her during the production of “Death of a Salesman” in 1985. Hunter was 17 at the time and was working with Hoffman as a production assistant intern.

Over the course of five weeks working on the set, Hunter says Hoffman made numerous sexually explicit comments to her and touched her inappropriately more than once, despite her hitting him repeatedly in response. She also detailed many perverse conversations Hoffman had with her and other women that made her feel very uncomfortable.

When she complained to her female supervisor, Hunter wrote, she was told that “for the sake of the production we have to sacrifice some of our values and just let it roll over our heads.”

At the time, Hunter documented Hoffman’s behavior in letters to her sister.

In her final letter summing up her opinion of Hoffman on week five, she said, “No one is 100 percent good or bad. Dustin's a pig, but I like him a lot.”

32 years later, Hunter is still struggling with how she feels about the situation.

Today, she writes, “Whenever I talk about this, I sense that my listeners want a victim and a villain. And I wish my feelings were as clear as theirs. I would be more comfortable if I felt nothing but revulsion for a man who had power over me and abused it. But I still like watching him onscreen.”

“At 49,” she continued, “I understand what Dustin Hoffman did as it fits into the larger pattern of what women experience in Hollywood and everywhere. He was a predator, I was a child, and this was sexual harassment.”

After The Hollywood Reporter published Hunter’s piece on Wednesday, they received an apologetic statement from Hoffman, saying simply, "I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am."